Tuesday. October 26th. VI:15.

Missed Prayers but attended recitation this morning, the day looking rather threatening
for an intended Parade. I felt in very low spirits, why I have not yet found out,
but I could feel no pleasure during the day. I employed my morning in reading and
writing exactly as if nothing whatever was going to happen. We of course had no morning
lecture and I was well employed. There is a vacant sort of restless feeling on days
of such excitement as holidays which troubles me exceedingly, and which I am always
anxious to keep down. It is a vacant sort of feeling when you cannot read and you
take a very indifferent sort of pleasure in what is passing around. I managed however
to control this until Exhibition commenced, when I went in and heard Allen’s part
which was a great jumble of nonsense put into the shape of a dashing Conference. Bartlett
was quite good and almost made me suspect he had obtained assistance.1 I was surprised at one thing today, as soon as I got upstairs, at observing so many
Porcellian Medals, or rather as I afterwards found most of them only ribbands, which
were worn by men not members of the Club. I have not mentioned the dissensions since
my election and refusal, but it appears that a Southerner, Cabaniss,2 being exasperated with the treatment he had received in not being elected, has joined
the Northern party, and incited them to do this thing in order to suppress the club.
The party being no party at all in this class, at least there being no aristocratic
Northern party, immediately adopted the hint, as these men who had the most claims
had also been disappointed in their elections. I consequently think that the [ . . . ] itself has been the result of the most contemptible feelings and also that the men
themselves have shown how utterly unworthy they were of belonging to an honourable
club { 424 } and how just the decision of the society in their case. I was very angry, I must confess.
It was so excessively contemptible that I was sorry the northern party had the disgrace
of adding this to many other rather unhandsome actions. The actual true state of the
case is that the Northern party in that class is composed of a set of blackguards,
if I may use so harsh a term. The few respectable individuals among them are mere
boys led about by any person who has force or energy enough to guide any body. Cabaniss
is a full grown man and ought to be the more ashamed.

I heard very few of the remaining parts. Hedge’s3 poem was very good. He displayed much taste and some talent. His disposition of his
subject was very good and his management of the parts was correct. He may make quite
a good poet although I cannot think that he is a man of Genius. I heard part of Chapman’s
Oration and my mind was made up. In the first place, I thought his character was stamped
upon his subject, “The future prospects of our youth.” He was pretty perhaps but not
great. He aspired to a description of what he had most thought of. In the next place,
he was entirely wanting in power of writing. The work was insipid, not argumentative
enough to be strong, and not figurative enough to be brilliant. This applies only
to what I have heard of it for I went out fatigued, as it was about half through.
What I did hear was enough to confirm my judgment, and it appears to have been the
judgment generally. Mr. Everett or some one since at Mr. Hedge’s said it was pretty
for so young a man, which is to me “damning with faint praise.” I had made up my opinion
of it previously however. It rained during the latter part of Exhibition, but as it
ceased after dinner, The Harvard Washington Corps paraded although in low spirits
on account of the weather. We went to Professor Hedge’s according to invitation. We
met there very nearly all the young ladies in town whom I met for the first time.
Not many of these were engaging enough to take the trouble to be amusing to, and I
felt too much strained by my dress to wish to exert myself so that I only was introduced
to Miss Hedge and a Miss Pierce of Brooklyne with one or two others. We had a very
pleasant afternoon considering every thing, and the entertainment was generous and
handsome. We remained here until some time after five o’clock whilst it was raining.
As soon as it had ceased again we went off and soon dismissed.

I then went home and took some tea after which I determined upon visiting all my class
who gave entertainment this evening. I first went to Winthrop’s, a man I have never
been introduced to, but whose civilities or at least those of his family, I wished
to notice, as somehow { 425 } or other I heard a complaint of my having been considerably impolite in refusing invitations
which I never heard of. We were received with much coldness, and soon escaped from
his company to Bartletts, from whence to Chapman’s, where I had a warm argument with him on the
Porcellian affair, after which went home. X.

1. Phineas Allen, George Bartlett, and George Edward Winthrop participated in a conference
on “the influence of merit, confidence, and intrigue on a man’s advancement in life.”
See Records of the College Faculty, 10:77, Harvard Archives.